Camelot Unchained to embrace "randomness" and "chaos"

Camelot Unchained will very rarely reward or punish players in spectacular ways.

In a new blog post, City State Entertainment boss Mark Jacobs said he's bored of combat where players know ahead of time precisely how much damage they will do every time.

While he promised that players will always have a pretty good idea of the outcome of most battles, he hopes that Camelot Unchained will sometimes be unpredictable in the extreme.

"Critical hits and failures will be rare but every so often, something should happen of such monumental glory that the players end up discussing these as water cooler conversations the next day," he said.

"Yes, it will not be fun to be on the receiving end of course but on the other hand, if you are on the other side or simply enjoy a good chuckle, your seeing that powerful Tuatha De Dannan mage cast a mighty spell and being turned into a horned rabbit might make your day."

Jacobs is hoping to apply some chaos in other aspects of the game. He mentioned the possibility of the environment changing in response to how players use magical spells which are "the equivalent of small, tactical nuclear devices".

"This could manifest in all manner of ways including creating temporary 'dead spaces' where magic might not work or maybe areas where magic works just a wee bit too well," he said.

"It could also mean that the geography of an area could suddenly change or even that certain beings might manifest themselves within the world quite unexpectedly and with rather interesting results. These are just a quick sampling of the many game devices that we can use.".

While acknowledging that players rarely enjoy randomness when it works against them, Jacobs said it is essential to an exciting experience.

"As we have made MMORPGs more and more handholding and predictable, we have lost much of both the joys and sorrows of having something really random happen to players whether it is during the course of a pitched battle or simply when just walking down a road," he said.

Each update the Mythic founder posts only makes Camelot Unchained sound more interesting; the MMO is to be crowd-funded in March.

Thanks, Massively.